When Sentiment is Left to Chance
by RowenaR
Summary: He lost a leg at El Alamein and he's drugged up to his filthy collar. But he recognized her right away. Two OCs. Written for my Holiday Fic Request Meme 2011.


**Author:** RowenaR

**Rating:** K+

**Category:** gen

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter, not mine, I not own, you not sue, etc.

**Summary: **He lost a leg at El Alamein and he's drugged up to his filthy collar. But he recognized her right away.

**A/N: **Holiday Fic Request Meme. **rareb** asked for a Gryffindor and a Slytherin OC falling in love and this what came out of it. I'm not quite happy with it but I just knew it had to be WWII instead of post-war UK. Hope it makes sense to you :)

Anyway, as always: Not a native speaker, so please excuse any weird grammatical constructions, run-ons and typos. Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast my marshmellows.

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><p><strong>When Sentiment is Left to Chance<strong>

"_No place for beginners or sensitive hearts  
>When sentiment is left to chance.<br>No place to be ending but somewhere to - start."_

_Sade, "Smooth Operator"_

He recognized her right away. Jane Walcott, used to be two years below him, Slytherin. A bucket of morphine and he still recognized her right away. A derisive snort elicits him. Jane Walcott in the curious grey and white uniform of a QA, doing the Florence Nightingale. If he weren't half delirious with a strange mixture of pain and drugs, he'd find this hilarious.

And wonder what the hell she's up to. He dimly remembers a rosy cheeked teenager chit with glasses, always in the library, being almost studious enough to be a Ravenclaw. The brightest witch of her year, they'd said. The brightest… and the most inscrutable.

Huh. For a bloke who got his leg blown off by the Germans and is drugged up to his filthy collar, he still feels pretty lucid. He likes that. Except that he keeps feeling the pain, too. That's what you get for losing your wand in the bloody desert. He groans, half hoping Walcott won't notice him in the confusion of an Allied field hospital so shortly after El Alamein, half fearing it.

He wishes he could just fall asleep but even for him, who's been through the hell of El Alamein, _twice_, and the tenacious fights of securing ground against the Germans yard for yard until he stepped on a sodding mine, the confusion, stench and cacophony of a tent full of wounded soldiers is too much to pass out in. He closes his eyes and wishes he were back at Hogwarts, the first time ever after leaving school five years ago. It seems like a fantasy, so far away from the real world and the desert sand and semiautomatic guns.

"Damian Bournewith. Of course." What the bloody… Sod it.

He opens his eyes again. Yep, there she is. Jane Walcott, in all her QA glory. He rolls his eyes. "Of course _what_, Miss Walcott?"

"Of course a bloody Gryffindor like you would get himself shot up in a stupid Muggle war." Said the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps officer? He raises one of his eyebrows and before he even gets to ask what _she_ is doing here, she glares at him and hisses, "None of your bloody business."

This… is actually quite amusing. He snorts again. "That's an awful lot of swearing for a Slytherin, Miss Walcott."

"_Senior Sister_ Walcott, _Lieutenant_." Oh right, _that_ sounds much more like a Slytherin. And what the sodding _fuck_ is she doing with his _leg_? "Hold still. I can't administer anything if you keep squirming."

He keeps squirming because it bloody _hurts_, dammit. "What are you _doing_ there?"

"My job, Bournewith." She doesn't look up and he… takes a double-take. Is that… a _wand_? "Yes, it is and if you don't keep your bloody mouth shut _I_ will shut it. Get me?" Oh God. Is she a _legilimens_, on top of it? "No, I'm not. You just think loud enough for everyone in the room to hear it. You always did. Shut up please, I have to concentrate."

That… is almost too much to bear for his poor, muddled brain. He's thinking _loud enough that the entire room can hear it_? And he… he… _always did that_? How would she know? She never even looked at him at School. Not even when he kept throwing her glances in the library, trying to find out what kind of books exactly she was reading. Some looked a lot like forbidden section. He just doesn't get it. Nothing of it, actually. So it kind of… slips out. "What… are you doing here, Walcott?"

"Didn't I just tell you that?" Whatever she's doing there – he decided to look anywhere but the bloody stump that used to be his left leg – it's hurting enough that he almost didn't get her answer.

He does, though, and because the pain keeps coming, as if someone was pulling a wire or something out of what's left of his leg, he grits his teeth before grunting, "I meant… what are you doing in "this stupid Muggle war" as you so nicely put it?"

She keeps shuffling around and he's pretty sure he also heard her mutter an incantation before giving back curtly, "And I told you before that it's none of your bloody business."

That's not something you should say, he thinks. _Especially_ as a Slytherin. Every time a Slytherin told him that, they had something to hide. But if he had to step on that mine, he sure can use it for _something_, right?"Oh come on, humour me. I'm going to get sent home as a poor war veteran soon."

"You'll get a Victoria Cross or some other stupid Muggle medal for it, I'm sure." Mh. Yeah, that strained face and the irritated tone feel a lot more Slytherin than the whole healer thing. "And if I just did my job right, they might even send you back straight to the front. That should be enough." He chooses not to think about what she meant by "doing her job right". The pain in his leg is telling an interesting enough story.

Instead he chooses to honour the nickname he had back in School. Bulldog. "Walcott, I mean it… if you detest it all that much… why _did_ you come here?"

She gives him one of those inscrutable looks she was so famous for back at Hogwarts. Those that always made you feel she's telling you less than half of what she thinks and what she's up to. And true to herself, she doesn't give him a straight answer. Instead, she asks, "Why did you?"

That's not the same thing, he wants to tell her. He's Muggle born, a mudblood as her older housemates liked to call him. He has a Muggle university degree and he's registered in Muggle archives. And it's none of _her_ bloody business, either. He blames it on the morphine that he doesn't tell her that, though. Instead it's, "That's not… I… my family… lived in London. Muggle London."

He's waiting for the stupid questions or, much more probable, the scoffing and the eye rolling and the hints at his family's supposed bad lineage and poverty. It never comes. "I see."

Well, that... really wasn't what he expected. And he has no way of knowing if she means it or not. And _most of all_, he doesn't care if she means it or not. "Do you?" But apparently, his drugged subconscious is very much interested in it. Damn it.

The bloody subconscious also reacts weirdly to the way Walcott tenses at his question. As if the answer to that is something she'd rather not share. It's hard to read her face but it's clear that she hides something, or _wants_ to hide something. He's prepared to wheedle it of her, if just for the sake of operational security but she beats him to it. "Yes. I lost people in the Blitz, too."

"Oh, really?" He can't help it, he just doesn't believe that. Lost people in the Blitz, his arse. The humourless laugh is a given. The anger surging through him at her surely pretended and even only barely visible hurt and pain is not. But he's pretty sure she didn't lose her entire family, like him. They weren't muggles, after all. "I thought you purebloods never left your little magical enclaves. I thought you were all oh so safe from that insignificant Muggle quarrel."

He was prepared for haughty nonsense about being a peasant or some such nonsense. He _wasn't_ prepared for barely veiled, raw pain in her eyes, if only just for a moment. "Being wounded does not give you the right to be an arsehole, Bournewith."

What gets to him - besides the very real pain she showed for just a moment - is the fact that she said it through clenched teeth. And that she's right. He's an idiot. He was assuming things, just based on the fact that they used to be in opposing houses and that she always seemed so unapproachable at School. The guy who just said that to her... that was his teenage self. The one that couldn't stop looking at her in the library. The one that wished she'd just look _back_. Just for _once_. If he still had both his legs, he'd probably get up now and leave her alone. As it is, the only thing left to do is saying, "I… I'm sorry, Walcott."

That's certainly a first, a Gryffindor apologizing, and her face seems to say as much for a moment. But then her training as a QA – he starts to realize that he'll probably never learn how she came about _that_ service – seems to win over the surprise and she says a little tight-lipped, "You should be."

Yeah. Well. That… that's it then, isn't it? They had a little spat in the middle of a desert war and she'll go now and leave him to his pain and the attempt at trying to push the thought aside of what's going to become of him now that he can't lead his troops into battle anymore. She's got a lot to do, he's sure about that.

But she's also… she's a familiar face, one his teenage self loved to admire from afar – and even once tried to ask out for the Yule Ball and never got to do it because suddenly all the famous Gryffindor courage seemed to have disappeared whenever he saw her – and she reminds him of Hogwarts. She reminds him of the time when winning the House Cup and not getting caught sneaking around the castle in the middle of the night was the most important thing in the entire world. He swallows. "Jane?"

She'd been about to leave but she turns around again. It seems a small miracle to him. "What?"

So. How to phrase this? "Do you have so much to… Could you maybe… I…" He can't believe he still can't get over himself.

"I have to finish my rounds." Yes. Of course. That… was to be expected.

"Oh. Right. Yeah." Bloody hell. He's a grown-up man. It's ridiculous how disappointed he just sounded.

"But we can catch up later. If Matron lets me." Okay, scratch that. It's ridiculous how _giddy_ that just made him feel. He can't even blame the drugs because _they_ are _not_ supposed to make him anything but sleep.

He tries to get back some decorum. "That would be… nice."

She nods, all serious. "Yes." Gee, one would think she finds it a chore to talk to him.

Then again, he did claim that she didn't care about anything but her precious pureblood relations. He wishes he never said that. "Jane?" And he wishes he could stop wanting to talk to her.

"_What_?" Oh come _on_. You'd think he just disturbed her reading of books from the Forbidden Section.

At least he starts feeling less ridiculous, though. He's lonely and in pain and he just… he needs something other than morphine. He runs a hand through his dirty, tousled hair. "Just a few more minutes? I mean, we don't have to talk or anything. Just… you know."

She throws a look around and when her eyes return to him, he can see that she's torn between her duty and something that looks… that looks like she _wants_ to stay with him. Out of her free will. In the end… "Alright. Two minutes. You're not the only wounded man around here."

He's pretty sure she doesn't know what kind of gift she just gave him. It's not like a Slytherin ever gave anything to a Gryffindor – or anyone else, for that matter – for free. "Of course. Two minutes… is absolutely fine. And you'll come back later, right?"

This time… is that a _smile_? "Yes."

"Promise?" Okay, that was a little silly…

"Promise." By Merlin, it _was_ a smile. A _real_ one. A tired little smile that made her dirty, exhausted face light up, made her seem as fresh as if she'd just returned from a broom ride across the Cotswolds instead of having worked for hours in a stuffy tent trying to make her magic work in the probably still unfamiliar surroundings of muggles.

He starts to realize that she might not have said yes because she wanted to give him something. She probably did it just as much because _she_ needs something. It's a kind of overwhelming realization. Overwhelming enough that he only manages an equally little tired smile. "Thanks."

She nods and even… sits down on the edge of his cot. "Sleep, Damian," she simply says and murmurs something, flicking the wand and he doesn't even get to wonder why he's suddenly so tired that closing his eyes and drifting over to sleep is so easy. He only revels in the curious secure knowledge that she'll come back when he's awake again and that he's not alone anymore. Not here in the desert, not in the entire world. Not anymore.


End file.
